Abstract
ABSTRACTThe traditional celestial navigation, position fixing with the sextant and stars, has not been displaced by the development of the accurate and all‐weather inertial and radio navigation (LORAN, OMEGA, Satellite) systems. The limitations of these electronic navigation systems require celestial navigation as the back‐up on major naval and commercial vessels. Also it is the prime navigation method on many small Navy, Coast Guard, commercial, and pleasure craft. However, marine celestial navigation is not all‐weather, requiring sufficiently clear weather and illumination to see the celestial body and sea horizon simultaneously. In addition sight reduction from the sextant data to obtain line of positions for plotting is a tedious and time‐consuming procedure. Presently potential exists to extend the operating period of sextants to nighttime, and to assist general navigation, as well, with night vision telescopes and low light level TV (LLLTV) cameras. The state‐of‐the‐art in microelectronics indicates it is feasible to develop a relatively inexpensive, small, hand‐held, portable sextant‐computer system that will alleviate the tedium and blunders of sight reduction, and increase navigation accuracy.This paper describes the new day/night digital readout marine sextant, the concepts of the portable sextant‐computer system, the development of the sight reduction computer program, and the remote‐controlled LLLTV camera‐sextant system, which the navigator can operate within the ship to obtain celestial body sightings.
Published Version
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